Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

Society for Neuroscience, Eneuro, 4(8), p. ENEURO.0558-20.2021, 2021

DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0558-20.2021

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

MyelTracer: A Semi-Automated Software for Myelin g-Ratio Quantification

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

In the central and peripheral nervous systems, the myelin sheath promotes neuronal signal transduction. The thickness of the myelin sheath changes during development and in disease conditions like multiple sclerosis. Such changes are routinely detected using electron microscopy throughg-ratio quantification. Whileg-ratio is one of the most critical measurements in myelin studies, a major drawback is thatg-ratio quantification is extremely laborious and time-consuming. Here, we report the development and validation of MyelTracer, an installable, stand-alone software for semi-automatedg-ratio quantification based on the Open Computer Vision Library (OpenCV). Compared with manualg-ratio quantification, using MyelTracer produces consistent results across multiple tissues and animal ages, as well as in remyelination after optic nerve crush, and reduces total quantification time by 40–60%. Withg-ratio measurements via MyelTracer, a known hypomyelination phenotype can be detected in a Williams syndrome mouse model. MyelTracer is easy to use and freely available for Windows and Mac OS X (https://github.com/HarrisonAllen/MyelTracer).